Anyone worth their salt in the digital identity/privacy world will know the famous New Yorker cartoon shown above.
On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog
This was posted in 1993 – a whole 22 years ago, in the early days of the internet, yet the cartoon could not be more relevant today.
We live in a world where the youth of today are in an identity crisis, Here shows an example of where young people have two Facebook profiles. Which isn’t uncommon, as people have profiles public which is them conforming to what society wants, usually conservative. Then a private profile hidden from family where someone can really express who they are.
I know for sure this is a common thing, at least in the UK, where young people hide profiles from their parents – wary of the judgement they will face when they find out what they really think/do/say.
An academic report on a study of first impressions shows how important they are, so in a world where 3/4 employers check online profiles – do you really want them to see your WKD personal record?
Although, you can’t be sure the profile is who you think it is. Even proved today, its not uncommon to see this as I did on my Facebook news feed:
The problem is there is no way to authenticate who is sat behind a computer. This could, theoretically have been a dog which stole ‘Connor’s’ identity, the only way to track who did it may be an IP address, but you wouldn’t know who is sat behind the screen. Which is a really scary thought.
While online identities are important, I believe the video of 7 steps to online profile is naive in the sense of privacy and identity security. Websites like LinkedIn will help you get a job, comments on youtube videos won’t exactly be too helpful. I believe you should keep personal profiles, like forums, YouTube private, so people can’t easily find information out about you, making it easy to copy your details and piece together your personal information. Eg. you could easily find out answers to peoples security questions by a google search and piece together a picture of someone through their linked profiles. Report on Security Questions
So you could be a dog on the internet, but having multiple profiles can weaken your online security through information exposure. Although socially it can be helpful.
Not even sure if you would have this private or not
A Bright New start 
Hi Todd,
I 100% agree with your opinion about the 7 steps video, which I think in encouraging people to have multiple identities fails to warn them about the repercussions that their online activity could have in their professional life.
On other other hand, I’m not sure I agree with the idea that the famous dog cartoon is relevant in this day and age. It seems that these days you do have to be able to prove you’re a dog, as Krotoski tells us in her article in the Guardian. As I explained in my post, these days Facebook is cracking down on pseudonyms and fake profiles, even SUSU RAG’s Sir Ragglesworth being asked for a passport to prove his identity as Mark Zuckerberg is an advocate of complete ‘transparency’ and ‘authenticity’. Although it’s obviously true that some people, like the examples that you included in your post, are slipping through Facebook’s net!
Thanks for the interesting links!
Katie
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Insightful article supported by amusing images! Also the link to the the ‘identity crisis amongst the youth’ and the first impressions report are interesting links so thanks for those.
I agree with you that the 7-steps video does fail on reasons surrounding security such as the tip to ‘use the same username for every social media you have’. I think for someone who just wants to use social media for personal reasons this is ridiculous advice, but I can see if you wanted to almost ‘brand’ yourself then this is the way forward, you just have to be aware of the risk.
Unfortunately I was scammed on Facebook through someone who had hacked my friend, therefore giving out private information about myself which lead to being stolen from. So being too “authentic” and “transparent” from my own experience is a real issue. However creating a profile as you have given an example of where you post images of people other than yourself is far too creative. People may want to escape from their lives but there should be no need to steal someone else’s identity.
Thanks for the read! Looking forward to your next post 🙂
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Hi Todd,
Interesting blog. I agree with you and Katie that the 7 steps video fails to inform people of the problems surrounding privacy and security and I like that you used several photos to demonstrate your point that authenticity is a growing, scary concern.
I do however want to query a point you made. You mentioned that “we live in a world where the youth of today are in an identity crisis”. Why youth? As we discovered last week, the digital “native”/”immigrant” dichotomy was problematic because it segregated the older generation. Likewise, it’s not only the “youth” who can have troubles with identity but adults can as well. LinkedIn is a good example here as it’s viewed as a professional space, thus may not be relevant to younger people but I regularly see certain connections using it like Facebook, “adding” new people left, right and centre. They struggle to understand how to use LinkedIn and how to separate their professional life from their personal.
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Hello Sophie!
Thanks for the feedback. Just to try and clarify my point. I was meant to show that the youth of today have an identity crisis as media and corperations have so many icons and style figures that people don’t feel like they can be themselves. Eg. Young people will call themselves indie, emo, gangster, mainstream, nerdy and so forth. Where in adolescence that is more profound as adults are more comfortable with themselves and their identities. Usually as they’ve settled down and have a safe set of people who accept them for who they are and don’t need to impress anyone.
But you are right than in a digital sense of identity that older people can have a crisis of online identity. But I feel young people transfer their identities within themselves more profoundly online than older people. Just in a sociological sense rather than digital.
I hope that made sense for you Sophie.
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Thanks for clarifying! That makes perfect sense!
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Hi Todd,
You wrote a very interesting blog and you mentioned some great viewpoints that I didn’t think about them. I agree with your opinion that youth usually hidden their profile to family because they really don’t want their parents see what they say or do. Parents always limit thinking and behaviors of their children. This situation also happens to me. So I never tell my parents my online profile. Also, for online security problems, our personal information are stole very easily. In China, some people even sell personal information which are stole to make money. I think a big part of reason is they are too many fake online identities and non-anonymous network users. And what you said “having multiple profiles can weaken your online security through information exposures” is reasonable. So it becomes contradictory. However, I have different opinion with you about 7 Steps To Building Your Online Identity. Most of us are not profession on the computer and network. So I think 7 Steps To Building Your Online Identity more or less can help us to avoid some common issues.
Thank you!
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